Page 82 of The Wrong Boss

“Name?” the man in the uniform asked from inside the booth, his voice slightly garbled by the window speaker.

“Carrie Woods,” I said, smiling. I glanced down at Evie, who gave me big eyes as she wiggled with excitement.

“Carrie Woods,” the man repeated, typing on his computer. He pressed a button, and the printer next to his hand began shooting out our tickets. He took them, tapped them on the counter to straighten them up, and slid them through the slot toward me. “Three tickets. Head on over to door B. Enjoy the show.”

I frowned. “Sorry—did you say three tickets?”

The man was already waving the next person forward. “Three tickets,” he confirmed, nodding before flicking his gaze to the old couple behind me. “The fourth is a receipt. Next!”

“I think there’s been a mistake—” I was jostled out of the way by the old couple and had no choice but to step aside. Frowning, I studied the tickets in my hand.

“Is everything okay?” Evie asked, voice small.

I looked down at her and forced a smile. “Of course. Let’s find door B.”

“Door B for bee!”

I chuckled, half-distracted by the third ticket in my hand. Why would?—

“Carrie!”

If my life were a movie, this part would’ve happened in slow motion. It took my brain a moment to connect the voice to the person. In that time, I looked up—and saw him.

My stomach yawned open, heat flaming in my chest and throat. My pulse began to pound harder as a high-pitched humsounded in my ears. Evie’s voice came to me from a distance, garbled and unclear. She stood just behind me, her hand hooked into the pocket of my jacket, her arm pointing toward the doors.

The only thing that was crystal clear in that moment was Cole’s face. His eyes were light, and his smile was wide. He cut through the milling crowd like they didn’t exist, the bottom edges of his wool jacket flapping around his knees.

Horror—what I was feeling was a deep, gurgling horror.

The light in Cole’s eyes dimmed as he took in my expression. He was halfway across the lobby now, the distance between us shrinking all too fast with his ground-eating steps. A slight frown tugged his brows together.

I clutched the tickets—thethreetickets—while time snapped back to normal speed.

“There’s door B, Mom!” Evie said. “Mom? Mom?”

She stepped out from behind me and looked up at me with those dark, too-perceptive eyes. I put my hand on her head and gulped, dragging my gaze from hers back up to the man striding toward us.

Except his strides had stuttered, and now his gaze bounced from me to Evie and back again, that furrow on his brow deepening. Six feet away from us, he stopped so suddenly it looked like he’d crashed into an invisible wall.

“Mom, door B is over there.”

“I see it, honey,” I said, surprised at how normal my voice sounded. My gaze was glued to Cole’s face—and his gaze was on my daughter.

Our daughter.

There would be no gentle conversation. There’d be noperfect words that I could put together, no softening of the blow. Cole knew. Heknew. And he was finding out in the worst possible way. I wouldn’t be able to talk my way out of this, to explain that what I’d felt—what I still felt—for him was real. That I hadn’t lied, not about our connection.

But the Big Lie was still there, and there was no more hiding behind it.

He was the father of my daughter, the little girl who looked like a mini, female version of him, the light of my life, the fulcrum upon which my entire existence hinged.

He dragged his gaze up to meet mine. His eyes were black. “Carrie,” he said, and it sounded like an accusation.

Evie finally registered his presence. Her little face scrunched as she took in Cole’s considerable height, his dark jacket, his darker expression. She shuffled closer to me, tucking her head under my arm.

“Cole,” I replied, still in that normal, pleasant lie of a voice. “What are you doing here?”

He was staring at my daughter again. Time moved oddly, speeding up and slowing down with every expression he made and word he spoke. I wanted to throw up.

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